


this sudden sinking feeling of a man about to fly

by lanyon



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU: Canon divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the events of <i>The Avengers</i>, Steve finds more than HYDRA weaponry on the Helicarrier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this sudden sinking feeling of a man about to fly

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Based on [this prompt](http://stevebucky-fest.dreamwidth.org/307.html?thread=635443#cmt635443) at this Steve/Bucky Prompt Meme.  
> +Title from _Demons_ by The National.

All he knows is that it’s not the same as before. It’s the last coherent thought he has. The cryogenic liquid warms too fast and there is a faint shuddering, from distant engines. He spills out of the chamber and into waiting arms. It’s not the same as before.

“Bucky?” asks a voice. “Bucky!”

He has no idea who Bucky is. He’s shivering and he’s burning up.

“I thought you were dead,” says the voice. Broad hands rub his upper arms even though there is no sensation in the left. “I thought you were _dead_. I saw you fall.”

He frowns and it feels as though his face is melting-contorting-aching because the voice and the hands just caught him; he didn’t fall.

“Bucky,” says the voice. It’s an insistent voice. He cannot see. “It’s me. It’s Steve.”

“Steve,” he tries to say but the word is formless liquid in his mouth. 

“We gotta get you some clothes.” 

He’s helped along and there are other voices, outrage and fear, and there are shapes, now, or shadows. A door opens and shuts and snicks and clicks with a lock. He is helped into clothes.

“It’s a bit big, Buck,” says the voice, which is attached to a large man, whose face swims into focus while those big hands zip closed the combat suit. The room shudders. They must be on a ship. He’s hauled to his feet and the man, who’s bigger than him, who has blonde hair, rests a large gun on his shoulder and tugs him along. He goes willingly. He likes how his hand feels, fingers laced with the fingers of another person, this other person, who’s bigger than him, who has blonde hair, who has a gun and a puzzled expression.

“Steve,” he manages. 

“Yeah, Bucky, that’s right.”

They walk into a room and there are people shouting. Steve sets down his gun and then there is silence.

“And then there’s this asshole,” says a man. “You making robots now, Nick? Gotta say, I feel insulted that Stark Industries never got to apply for that tender.”

“ _That_ ,” says another man, with an eyepatch and a lot of rage. “That is the Winter Soldier. Cap, what have you done?”

“What have _I_ done, Fury?” asks Steve and, oh, his anger is glorious. “I’m not the one keeping Bucky Barnes in a goddamned box. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Bucky - why not? Steve seems so certain and he prefers it to the Winter Soldier - Bucky moves closer to him.

“Because we didn’t know-” says a woman, whose voice is like caramel and warmth. 

“ _Bullshit_ ,” says Steve. 

“You need to put him back,” says Fury. 

“They’re always worth more in the original packaging.”

“Shut up, Stark,” says Fury. “You need to put him back.”

“Why?” asks Steve. “ _Why_?”

“Because,” says yet another man and this room is too crowded, with too many exits. “The Helicarrier isn’t designed to accommodate Loki, the Other Guy and the Winter Soldier, I’m guessing. Unless you want a cage match, Fury?”

Voices are raised and Bucky feels anxious and he picks up the gun. He doesn’t know what else to do. There’s ringing in his ears and an unnatural tension in the room.

“Put down the gun, Soldier,” says Fury. 

“He feels threatened,” says Stark. “I feel threatened. We’ve got Captain America, a big ole threat, and his lapdog and I feel threatened-”

“Can it, Stark,” says Steve. “Bucky’s worth ten of you.” 

“I’ve got a Forbes list that says different.”

“The Winter Soldier is a highly weaponised-” says the woman (Natasha, Agent Romanov) as if by rote. 

“He’s a _man_ ,” says Steve. He’s practically shouting now and Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder. It seems the place to put it and he can feel Steve relax slightly, even when it all goes to shit in fire and noise. 

Fury tries to tell him to stay put but there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell that Bucky (that the Winter Soldier, that whoever he is) is going to leave Steve on his own. The Helicarrier spits out gods and monsters and Bucky shoots a guy who was going to shoot Steve and someone else is dead. 

It doesn’t matter. Bucky doesn’t know who he was and there is thrumming in his head. He doesn’t know who he is but when Steve tells Natasha to suit up, and Clint, too, there’s nowhere else Bucky’s going to be. They’re in the back of a jet being piloted by Clint and Bucky thinks he could like him because he shakes Bucky’s hand and he is fearless and sympathetic.

“Here’s to being re-fucking-made,” Clint says and they crash-land.

Bucky’s gaze is drawn up and up to Stark Tower and there is a blue light beneath the portal and everything shifts just a bit (and there is something that is New York in the air; that musty subway smell unfurling around him and he blinks at the strange neon which features in none of his memories).

“Are you sure?” asks Steve, turning to Bucky. “Are you sure you can do this, Buck?”

Bucky’s not sure of anything but the earnest expression and the faint scent of sweat and the noise of screaming mayhem all around them, which is too startlingly familiar. He’s not sure but he nods.

“Sure, Steve. Just tell me what to do.” Words come easier now, though they’re still slurred enough for Steve to look concerned. 

“Stay with me.”

Bucky can do that; he can stay with Steve and there is something like muscle memory or hatred. 

“Shit, your guy can shoot, Cap,” says Clint, through the comms and Bucky looks at Steve through the sights of his rifle and his finger is only slightly itchy.

“Always could,” says Steve and Bucky doesn’t think he’s imagining the pride in his voice. “Your six, Hawkeye!”

It’s a glorious tussle until Stark puts Clint on one building top and Bucky on another so that they call all the plays and he’s so close to Stark Tower now and its blue glow that creeps into the crevasses of his brain and curves over the orbit of his eyes. It’s like being near a flickering television (old and black and white and in a hotel room in Leningrad). 

Natasha (Natalia, balletic and red-haired and so much the same) speeds past on a requisitioned Chitauri vehicle and she flashes him a smile that is fond and frightened and she knows what he really is and that frightens him, in turn.

She throws him one of the Chitauri weapons and within seconds, Bucky has figured out how to use it and the Chitauri fall by the tens, as hundreds pour through the breach in the sky.

Natasha can close the breach and then there is a nuclear missile and Bucky knows what that means. He doesn’t know who he is, aside from a man steeped in blood, and the Chitauri will not exceed his kill-count today. He is a history of carnage and he knows what that means. 

He follows Natasha’s lead and bodily tackles Chitauri from their aircraft. 

“Steve,” he says, soft-urgently, though everyone can hear.

“You okay, Buck?” Steve is breathless and there are soft sounds of fists and flesh and not-flesh, and Bucky knows all about that. “You need anything?”

“I do stupid things sometimes, right?”

“Bucky! Bucky, no!”

“It’s okay, Steve.”

It’s not really okay. Catching a nuclear missile, even so enhanced, is painful as his left arm is all but ripped from his body. Stark has the same idea it seems and he deflects Bucky and missile, up to the rift in the sky and Bucky can hear something and then nothing and then he can feel arms around his waist and he tries to struggle, to fight it off and then everything is blank. 

Everything is blank till he wakes up on the ground, in Steve’s arms and Stark is on the ground, too, flailing inelegantly and talking about shawarma. 

“I could eat,” says Bucky, his voice regrettably shaky. His shoulder hurts, obliterating everything else 

“Then eat you shall,” says Thor, sounding relieved. 

When they go to Stark Tower, where the blue glow is muted and the bad guy is muzzled like a dangerous dog, Bucky sinks to the ground. His head pounds, in time with the consuming ache in his shoulder, and Stark says it’s why he doesn’t go for heroics. He hands Bucky a drink and eyes his arm.

“That’s gonna have to come off.”

“I know,” says Bucky and he drains his drink. Steve comes over. 

“Don’t hover, Cap,” says Tony. “Get the patient another bourbon.”

It hurts almost as much as catching a bomb, as falling off a train, as wiping fingerprints from a child’s crib but then it’s done and Bucky feels off-centre while Tony holds his disarticulated arm and declares that he’ll build a better one. 

“I feel better already,” says Bucky and it’s strange that he should feel whole and incomplete.

Thor is looking up, speculatively, and then he nods decisively.

“My brother is lost to me,” he says and he’s looking at Bucky. “Yours may not be. _You_ may not be.”

Bucky doesn’t quite understand but he knows that Steve is looking at him and he knows that everyone has fallen silent. 

Bucky nods and Thor leads him to the casket holding the Tesseract

“There is any number of truths to be found here,” says Thor. “You must choose the right one.”

Bucky swallows and he can think of only one word. _Steve_. He is truth enough and he is the only truth Bucky Barnes needs to know. He knows he was the Winter Soldier but cannot remember the specifics (they are no truth to him). He knows that SHIELD tried to use him but SHIELD is not the truth (it is the furthest thing from the truth). 

He opens his eyes and there is his true north, smiling and golden, and when Steve kisses him, he doesn’t even hear the intakes of breath or the clunk as Stark drops his arm. 

(“So, not a threat, then?”)

It is the variable SHIELD did not account for (it is the truth).


End file.
